Husain tops Bid & Hammer sale

Ashoke Nag, TNNFeb 14, 2008, 06.01am IST

KOLKATA: Bangalore-based auctioneer Bid & Hammer has sold 46% of its 189 lots in its recent auction of modern and contemporary paintings and works of art. While its total sale of paintings is placed at Rs 2.78 crore, the artworks have fetched around Rs 68 lakh. M.F. Husain's Shiva has swung the highest price among paintings at Rs 39.73 lakh.

"As a start-up auction house, our performance at our first-ever auction in Bangalore is fairly satisfactory. 46% of the lots were sold resulting in total sales of 33% in value terms. 8% of the lots sold above the upper estimate and 69% of them went between the lower and upper estimates. 60% of lots were picked up through commissioned bidding.

The rest were bought out over the telephone," Mr Maher Dadha, chairman and managing director of Bid & Hammer, told ET. Dwelling on the buyer composition, he said Bangalore and Chennai covered 55% of the sales, followed by buyers from the Middle East at 29% and Mumbai which brought 7% of the collectors. The remaining buyers participated from other parts of India and the US, Spain and Australia.

Artists introduced in the auction included G S Shenoy, Baren Basu, R. Raja, Pratibha Dakoji and K K Raghava. In the works of art section a colonial Indian silver chandelier was acquired for Rs 42 lakh.

"We have taken the initiative to promote art operating out of Bangalore and the south which have been rightly or wrongly branded as conservative in comparison to Mumbai & Delhi. Our first auction has reinforced the belief that we will be able to perform much better in our subsequent sales," Mr Dadha said.